Why do the Russians hate the Turks?

Because they know them.

An all-sufficient answer. Our knowledge was not bought without bitter tears. The Tartar wrote his character across our Russia in letters of flame. You English people are not touched with a feeling of the sufferings of the rayahs because you have not been in all points afflicted as they. Russians have. In centuries of anguish they have learned the lesson of sympathy with those who are crushed beneath an Asiatic yoke. We feel for them because we suffered with them. As they are—so we were. They are not only our brethren in race and religion, they are also our brothers in misfortune, united to us in “the sacred communion of sorrow.”

Many of my English friends know but little about the causes of hereditary hatred of the Russian for the Turk. I venture, therefore, to state briefly the facts which my countrymen can never forget.

It is more than six hundred years since first the Russian people fell under the curse of Tartar domination. Before that time the Russians were as free, as prosperous, and as progressive as their neighbours. Serfdom was unknown. The knout, Mr. Tennyson’s abomination, was not introduced until two hundred and fifty years after the Tartar conquest There were Republics in Russia as in Italy, and the Grand Prince had no more power than other sovereigns. But in the middle of the thirteenth century Russia, lying nearest to Asia, experienced a Tartar invasion. An accident of geographical position subjected her to a visitation, from the consequences of which she has freed herself by superhuman struggles.

It was in 1224 that the Tartars first established themselves as conquerors in South-Eastern Russia. It was not till the close of the sixteenth century that we finally rid ourselves of these troublesome intruders. The Tartar domination, however, did not last much more than two hundred years. It was in 1252 that St. Alexander Nevsky received the title of Grand Duke from the Tartars. It was not till 1476 that we ceased to pay tribute to our conquerors. But long after Ivan III. had broken the power of the Mongol horde the Tartars spread desolation and death through Russia. As late as 1571, when England, under Elizabeth, had just given birth to a Shakespeare, Moscow was burnt to the ground by a wandering host of Asiatics.

It is easy to write the words, “invaded by the Tartars;” but who can realize the “fact”? Western Europe, which felt afar off the scorching of the storm of fire which swept over Russia, throbbed with horror. Kind-hearted St. Louis of France prayed “that the Tartars might be banished to the Tartarus from whence they had come, lest they might depopulate the earth.” All the monsters who to you are mere names were to us horrible realities. The Khans, the Begs, whose pyramids of skulls the world still hears with dread, rioted in rapine throughout the whole of Russia. Five generations of Russians lived and died under the same degrading yoke as that which has crushed the manhood out of the Bulgarians.

For centuries every strolling Tartar was as absolute master of the life, the property, and the honour of Russians as the Zaptieh is of the lives of the Southern Slavs. To you English people atrocities are things to read of and imagine. To us Russians they are a repetition of horrors with which we have been familiar from childhood. Moscow has twice suffered the fate of Batak, and nearly every city in Russia has suffered the horrors inflicted upon Yeni-Zagra.

For at least three centuries our national history is little more than a record of the struggle of our race for liberty to live. Our national heroes are the warriors who did battle with the Asiatic intruder, and to this hour in our churches the images of St. Alexander Nevsky fighting the Tartars stir the patriotism and excite the imagination of the youthful Russian. The path of liberty was steep and thorny. Again and again our efforts were baffled. A town revolted, and it was consumed. Bands of armed peasants who resisted the Tartars were from time to time massacred to a man. But the Russian nation did not despair. As your own Byron sang—Byron, who gave his life to the cause for which thousands of my countrymen are giving theirs to-day—

 

“ Freedom’s battle, once begun,

Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son, 

Though baffled oft, is ever won.”

 

Gradually Russia shook off the yoke of her oppressors. Her advance resembled that of Servia and Roumania. After having enjoyed administrative autonomy she secured her position as a tributary State, and then at last, waxing strong with freedom, she burst the chains with which she had been so long bound.

Russia was free from the Asiatic oppressor, but the evil results of his domination remained. Mr. Gladstone, in one of his grandest speeches on the Eastern Question, explained the comparatively low intellectual condition of the Southern Slavs by referring to the sandy barrier which, while producing nothing valuable itself, nevertheless keeps the destroying wave from encroaching upon the fertile land. What the Southern Slavs did South Russia did for Northern Europe. Upon us the Asiatic wave spent its force. We were overwhelmed. But we saved Europe from the Mongol horde.

While we saved we suffered; we emerged from the flood of barbarism ourselves partially barbarous. Our progress had been arrested for centuries. All our national energies had been diverted into the struggle against our conquerors. What had once been flourishing towns were blackened ‘ ruins. Liberty itself disappeared for a time. To fight the Tartar all power was centred in the hand of one ruler. Serfdom was amongst the legacies of Tartar domination. While the rest of the world had advanced, Russia had even been forced back.

It was a terrible visitation, but it left behind it at least one benefit. But for the tortures of these sad centuries, the Russian people might have been as indifferent as the French and the English to the cries of those who are still under the power of the Pashas. But for the sympathy of the Russian people Chefket Pasha and Achmet Aga might have ruled for ever in Bosnia and Bulgaria. The Tartars prevented that. They taught the Russian people what the rule of the Asiatic is,—a dreadful lesson, creating that inextinguishable hatred of the Turk which will ultimately secure his ejection from Europe. The death-warrant of the Ottoman was signed by Timour the Tartar.